


untitled

by typicrobots



Category: Lost in Translation (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-10
Updated: 2004-10-10
Packaged: 2018-06-05 09:51:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6700108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typicrobots/pseuds/typicrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a man at the bar with clips on his back and the girl sitting behind him laughed, which surprised her because she'd forgotten what that sounded like. It was like the faint rumbling of distant thunder, short and sudden and far between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	untitled

We're watching the moonlight bounce off the New York City skyline. Blue and green and gold, but by the way John is drumming his fingers against the windowsill, I can tell that he's playing a song in his head. To him the lights are music notes and me his guitar as he thrum thrums his fingers against my back. He moves away from the window and starts to dig through his CD collection. Already he has his headphones on.  
  
The guitar has been John's latest obsession ever since we came back from Tokyo, and he hasn't stopped twitching or humming yet. There's a manic energy that surrounds John that makes me feel I have to be still for the both of us. Like a calm before the storm.  
  
It gets too much sometimes that I have to leave the room. I go down the hotel bar and it's the same dim lighting, the same clinking of glasses, but nothing is really the same. I turn around looking for the jazz band but of course the soft elevator music is coming from a sound system.  
  
Tokyo feels like a faded and hazy dream, like everything that happened there happened to someone else and I was just watching it on TV. There was a man at the bar with clips on his back and the girl sitting behind him laughed, which surprised her because she'd forgotten what that sounded like. It was like the faint rumbling of distant thunder, short and sudden and far between. I close my eyes but that feeling never comes back.  
  
Sometimes late at night, I'm flipping through the channels and I see that man staring back at me through the screen, but he's years too young and driving a truck. He's not the man I remember and this isn't the show that I was watching. I shut the TV off.  
  
I turn away from the window to look at my husband. John is singing out loud and slapping his hand against his knee, keeping time with the beat. I sit on the windowsill and lean up against the pane, feeling a little dizzy from knowing that we're 34 floors up.  
  
New York isn't Tokyo, and my life isn't a television show. Somewhere across the country, the man is sitting at home with his wife and kids and that isn't the way I remember him either.  
  
I call out to John. He looks up at me expectantly, pulling off his headphones, and I realize that there's nothing to say.


End file.
